I was introduced to MiniDisc technology about a month ago by a friend of mine who is in the radio production business. I was trying to get into voice-over work and I needed a clean source to cut to. He recommended the MiniDisc. So I bought one, a Sony MDS-JE520. I was immediatly impressed by it's clean, quality sound and knew right away, this was the way to go!
Here's the way I use my MD deck: I take the machine to the radio station where I work (http://www.waao.com) and plug it into the production console. I have the material that I'm going to cut all ready to go. I cut the "dry" voice tracks directly to the MD with NO processing at all (sample). After I'm through cutting. I bring the MD deck back home and plug it into my computer system. I use Cool Edit 96 to do the transfer from MD to the hard-drive in 16 bit/44khz stereo. After the audio is on the hard-drive, I edit it down (again with CoolEdit) taking out all the "trash" (bad takes, etc.), leaving only the good takes. I use L3 Producer to compress the audio into a single mp3 file. It doesn't take long to do the conversion with my 300mhz AMD K-6/2 equipped computer. After this is done, I simply email the file to my producer/friend in Delaware and he does the rest! You can listen to his demos online at: http://www.omegaproductions.com.
I'm not on the website with a demo yet...but will be soon. I just got into this line of work and don't have any stations right now other than the one I work for...but I'm open and ready. After the files are produced (sample 1 & 2), the producer emails them back to me. I take these files (or "sweepers" as we call them in the radio business), transfer them back to the MD and back to the station for use on the air. The dub from MD to our on-air system is nice and clean and they sound GREAT on the air !
I have been very impressed with the quality and ease of use the MD offers. I highly recommend it. It works very well for what I use it for and produces great souding results (and there are NO shipping charges for sending tape or disc thru the mail..heh heh heh!). I haven't used the editing functions yet so I can't say anything there, but I do love the way you can record and then erase the track (especially for what I do) if you don't like the result.
I also dub my mp3 files onto it so I can play them back without using the computer...and I'm finding more and more uses for it all the time.
Way to go MiniDisc !!
Thanks for listening!
Allen Scofield
Music Director & Middays (9a-2p)
WAAO FM-Andalusia, Alabama